Chapter 2

贾夫人仙逝扬州城

冷子兴演说荣国府

Feng Su is summoned to the yamen to find Jia Yucun is the magistrate, who gives them money and silk and requests Lucky’s hand in marriage. Yucun had been successful in the examinations but had fallen from favour, and, short of cash in Yangzhou whilst travelling, became tutor to aristocrat Lin Ruhai’s 林如海 only child, daughter Lin Daiyu 林黛玉, whose mother died a year later and so who had suffered from recurrent sicknesses, leaving Jia idle.

In a temple, he meets an antique dealer acquaintance, Leng Zixing 冷子兴. Leng tells Jia that his relatives, the Jias of Rongguo and Ningguo, who Yucun consider too exalted for him, are feeling the pinch of extravagant living. Jia Zhen 贾珍 at Ningguo was degenerate, along with many Jia males, and Jia Zheng 贾政 at Rongguo, was a scholar and now Under Secretary in the Ministry of Works. He had a son and daughter, then twelve years later a boy called Jia Baoyu 贾宝玉 born with jade in his mouth. Zheng has little affection for him since, on his first birthday, he reached for feminine objects instead of masculine, but his grandmother adores him. Leng says he is now ten, very bright and a future libertine, but Yucun interprets the description as someone philosophically astute and declaims on the subject – he had a similar case when tutoring in Nanjing.

Leng explains the Rongguo family tree, and Jia learns that Lin Daiyu’s mother was Jia Zheng’s sister.